iOS 6.1 sees 22% adoption in less than two days, could be fastest ever

After launching on Monday, iOS 6.1 is already being used by nearly 22 percent of users monitored by one Web content firm, setting up Apple's newest mobile OS update to be the most quickly adopted to date.

Data collected by Onswipe, a web content creation company, shows that as of 3 p.m. EST Wednesday, iOS 6.1 has been adopted by 21.81 percent of about 13 million iOS users observed from sites using the firm's technology, reports TechCrunch. The adoption rate has been strong, going from 11.35 percent in the first 24 hours of availability to 16.92 percent earlier today.

Breaking down updates by device, the iPhone was at 23.92 percent, while the iPad peaked at a slightly lower 20.90 percent. The overall 21.81 percent adoption factors in all iOS devices including the iPod touch.

In comparison to iOS 6.1, Onswipe saw Apple's last update, the major version change to iOS 6, take an entire week to penetrate 44.58 percent of the installed user base. The company's CEO Jason Baptiste attributes the spike in adoption to customer familiarity with Apple's over-the-air update system that debuted with iOS 5 in 2011.

Wednesday's report is in line with data gathered by other firms like Chitika, which estimated that iOS 6 saw a 15 percent adoption rate after 24 hours, but took over a month to surpass 60 percent.

When the newest iOS update was released on Monday, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Philip Schiller noted that iOS 6 is now running on 300 million iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices after being available for only five months.

"It may be the most popular new version of an OS in history," he said.

47.6% are still on Android version 2.3.x. The last Gingerbread update was released 2 years ago. It's been 10 months since the very last ICS update and yet version 4.0.x still totals only 9%. All of Jelly Bean -- not just the latest point update from November 27, 2012 -- only totals 1.2%.

Excellent graph to post, Solipsism. I think the high adoption rate to upgrades is also a result for the delta updates we now have. That, and the fact that the process is so smooth and simply always works I don't even bother to do updates at home, backing up first, clean reboot and all that. Nope, just install the update.

OT: I wonder how these phones from 2009 are doing. Will the latches from their SD Card slot have broken off and such? Removable battery not removable anymore? OT, just in case some1 whines over this

Excellent graph to post, Solipsism. I think the high adoption rate to upgrades is also a result for the delta updates we now have. That, and the fact that the process is so smooth and simply always works I don't even bother to do updates at home, backing up first, clean reboot and all that. Nope, just install the update.

I'd say OTA updates, delta updates, the device letting you know there is an update, the congruency of having all iDevices that can update be updatable at the same time making it much more well known to the average user, the growth rate* of the platform with new devices that can all get the same update, and supporting devices with the newest update for 3 full generations (in most cases) really help make this a solid platform and ecosystem that has no equal.

* Apple has previous stated that each new iPhone model outsells all previous iPhone models before it. I would imagine that's also true for the iPad.